Closer Look: XFX Radeon HD5750

The HD 5750 breaks with the general design of all the other HD5xxx cards, in order to reduce production costs. The card is also smaller, at 18.4 x 11 x 3.8 cm, which means it will fit into any case without an issue. A radial-finned heatsink sits directly on the GPU, and does all of its cooling without the extra expense of heatpipes or folded and fabricated fin blocks. Just a simple casting does the job, combined with a plastic shroud to keep the air from the fan blowing through the heatsink, rather than around it. The reference design cooler also provides a large expanse of real estate for ATI's retail partners to display their branding. There are few secrets to the HD5750 overall design, what you see is what you get.

The connections on the rear of the card are consistent with the entire HD5xxx series: two DVI, one HDMI and one DisplayPort connector. The collection of I/O ports leaves a small amount of room for some exhaust vents, but they really serve no real purpose with the cooling arrangement this card uses.

The back of the Radeon HD5750 is bare, which is normal for a card in this market segment. The main features to be seen here are the metal cross-brace for the GPU heatsink screws, which are spring loaded, and the four Hynix GDDR5 memory chips on the back side. They are mounted back-to-back with four companion chips on the top side of the board. Together, they make up the full 1GB of memory contained on this card.

For most high-end video cards, the cooling system is an integral part of the performance envelope for the card. Make it run cooler, and you can make it run faster is the byword for achieving gaming-class performance from the latest and greatest GPU. Even though the HD5750 is a mid-range card with a relatively small GPU die size, it's still a potential gaming product and will be pushed to maximum performance levels by many users.

Looking at the heatsink from the side, we see that is a very low mass design. The fins are very thin and widely spaced, which may look like an economy measure, but is actually the most efficient design for moving heat away from the GPU and out into the airstream generated by the fan. We can also see that all the heat generated by the card is going to stay inside the case, but as we'll see later, there's not much of it to worry about. We'll be looking at cooling performance later on, to see if there are any issues caused by the lower cost cooling system.

Now, let's peek under the covers and have a good look at what's inside the XFX Radeon HD5750.